July 22, 2006

The Project Runway website has a fun new toy to play with: a video mashup tool where you can splice together some of the best video clips from seasons 2 and 3--including contestants, judges, and of course Tim Gunn--with music and some special effects.

July 05, 2006

Consider: People in the crowd singing along to a cover of the Goo Goo Dolls' "Iris"; Jason Newsted and Tommy Lee bobbing their heads to Coldplay's "Yellow"; a contestant saying, "it's not about image, it's about the music," followed by 30 seconds of moody shots of said contestant staring off into the distance, looking pained in a very abstract & vague way. It's brilliant!

July 04, 2006

Both non-fiction, both full of brilliant & larger-than-life characters, both very funny. Here's a quote from Heat, a New Yorker staff writer's story of training both in Mario Batali's kitchen (at Babbo) and under the tutelage of several artisans in Italy. This is Dario Cecchini, the greatest butcher in the world, who works in the 900-person town of Panzano, twenty miles from Florence, describing to a potential customer why his beef comes from Spanish cows, rather than the local legendary white cow, the chianina:

"The chianina is now not good because it is fundamentally banal. It is a name. Prada is a name. Versace is a name. Armani is a name. Chianina is a name. If I sold it, which I do not, I would be selling a name. Would I make money selling a name? Certainly. Would it be good for bizzness? Certainly. But bizzness does not interest me. Names do not interest me. Meat interests me. That's why I sell meat, not names. Besides," Dario adds, in a final flourish, "I don't believe in the purity of races. You, evidently, believe in the purity of races. So did Hitler. But Hitler, in my view, was wrong."

So it would appear that Godwin's Law has made the leap even to small hill towns in Tuscany!

July 01, 2006

Brilliant stuff. Well, so: boo on Joni Mitchell (though at least it's not that rubbish parking lot song), but yay on everything else, particularly A Tribe Called Quest, which I was just listening to right now!